Hyderabad IS arrests: NIA builds case around ‘masjid meetings’, calls

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“Most of these men have been friends for long and some have at least known one another. For example, Muzaffar Hussain Rizwan was a tenant of Ibrahim Yazdani,” an NIA officer said.

Out of the 11 picked up Wednesday, five were produced in the NIA court Thursday and sent to judicial custody for 14 days. The remaining six have not been arrested. Among these is Mohammed Irfan a.k.a. Yaqais Irfan, 27, a matriculate who did fabrication work. Among the arrested is Abdullah Bin Ahmed Al-Amoodi alias Fahad, 31, is a management graduate.

In its remand petition, the NIA said the five had entered into a criminal conspiracy to wage war against the Government of India by collecting weapons and explosives material to target prominent persons, public places, religious places, malls, markets and public properties and in particular sensitive government buildings in Hyderabad. The NIA submitted they have acquired weapons and explosives to carry out violent terrorist attacks and related subversive activities. ”Information has been received to the effect that the group members are in communication with Islamic State and they were getting directions for planning and execution of terrorist activities in India from Islamic State,’’ the NIA stated.

The NIA said the five were planning multiple blasts between 5 to 7 pm Saturday. Security has been beefed up at several places in the twin cities, roadblocks have been put up, and Hyderabad Police Commissioner M Mahender Reddy has issued a statement cautioning people against rumours circulating in the social media.

Investigations have found that Ibrahim has applied for a visa to go to Saudi Arabia and the NIA is probing if he was planning to reach Syria.

Ibrahim had reportedly shown bomb-making videos over YouTube to the group. NIA sources said he was in touch with Indian Mujahideen operative-turned-Islamic-State-recruiter Shafi Armar (operating under the assumed name of Aamir) over the Internet and used to disseminate information and orders received from him to the group through phone conversations. Conversations suspected to be in code — “Saman taiyar hai, kaam ko anjaam dene ka waqt aa gaya hai, isliye phone kiya”, “doodh ko dukaan se utha lo”, “chawal pakane hain”, “pakwan ke kaam par hoon” etc — were picked up by Intelligence Bureau and put the group on the radar.

“Some of these conversations could be genuine since Ramzan was on and the group would also discuss about breaking their fast. But since they coincided with the procurement of explosives and weapons, they seem to be suspicious and the group will be questioned about it,” an NIA officer said.

The NIA has claimed to have recovered two Chinese-made 9 mm pistols, urea, ammonium nitrate, Rs 15 lakh in cash, 23 mobiles, three laptops, seven pen drives, two gas stoves, a condenser, a heater timer, a pressure meter, 3 litres of paint, two clocks, masks and two gloves from the houses of the accused. Forged identity documents and literature on making explosives were also seized.

The accused have reportedly told the NIA that for conducting terror attacks they had contributed Rs 1.5 lakh from their own pockets. The Rs 15 lakh recovered from Ibrahim’s house has yet not been found to be linked to the conspiracy, sources admitted.

Of the Rs 1.5 lakh the group had spent some and taken Rs 65,000 to Ajmer to buy weapons but the person meant to sell the weapons did not arrive, NIA sources said quoting the interrogation. The weapons were finally bought from a person in Nanded. NIA sleuths suspect it was on the directions of Shafi Armar that Ibrahim sent Habeeb to places like Nanded and Ajmer on a bike to procure weapons. “The seller must have been Armar’s contact. Or else there was no need to go so far on a bike for when you can get them in Hyderabad,” an officer said.

It was Habeeb who procured most of the explosives and chemicals on instructions from Ibrahim, NIA sources said. He collected chemicals like sulphuric acid, acetone, hydrogen peroxide etc from Hyderabad and Anantapur. He allegedly bought also alarm clocks to use as timers in the bombs.

(With inputs from Sreenivas Janyala)